Saturday, 16 July 2016

Man of the West (1958)

Manden fra vesten

There are a
lot of westerns on the List. So many in fact that I have started to get a bit
bored by them. Or at least the idea of them. By now a western needs to bring
something new to the table or it will get a negative rating from me.

This was
what I was thinking watching “Man of the West”. Why is this movie on the List?
What does this movie do that I have not seen a million times before? It is
okay, well-acted and beautifully shot, but it was only when I watched the bonus
material on the DVD, a commentary by scholar Douglas Pye, that I discovered
what made this movie special. With that in mind I am okay having this movie on
the List, but please, please give me a break with the westerns.

Gary
Cooper, the old western legend, is this time a country bumpkin going on what
appears to be his voyage of a lifetime, from his homesteader hamlet to Fort
Worth to hire a school teacher for the village. His ride is cut short when the
train is held up by bandits. The raid fails, but Cooper’s Link Jones, a gambler
named Sam Beasley (Arthur O’Connell) and Saloon singer (whatever that implies)
Billie Ellis (Julie London) are cut off from the train and have to continue on
foot.

Link finds
an old shack they can stay in, but when he opens the door it turns out the
place is occupied by the very bandits who raided the train. The movie now takes
a turn when we find out that this is Link’s old gang, one he left years ago to
start a new life with wife and children. The gang is led by Link’s old father
figure, Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb), a man who practically raised Link, and he is
mighty pleased that Link is back. The rest of the gang is a brutal and not too
smart a bunch and they are less pleased at having Link back. He is challenged
at every turn and in an early climax he has to protect Billie from being raped
without being killed himself.

Dock wants
to bring Link along for the raid of his life, a rich bank in the township of
Lassoo, while the rest the gang is poised to kill Link. This balancing is made
even odder when it turns out that Lassoo is a ghost town and Dock is raving
mad.

While the
apparent story here is that Link has to extricate himself from this pinch and
hopefully save the girl in the process, a story involving gun smoke, horses and
a lot of shouting (and a pair of breast almost falling out of a corsage), there
is a far more interesting story beneath.

When Link
opens that door to the shack we get a true David Lynch moment. The door is the
door to Link’s past and the gang members are all ghosts from back then. What
Link is fighting is his past guilt that he has to come to terms with. There is
no bank in Lassoo and Dock Tobin is ultimately an impotent ghost, but Link has
to fight off all those temptations to fall back into his old pattern if he is
to deserve his new life. That somehow includes Billie, who must resemble some
woman of his past.

So this is
actually a movie about redemption, that at some point you have to face your
skeletons in the closet. This is a plotline I have seen before, but dressed as
a western this comes about new and refreshing and as all good movies it gives
you something to think about. It took that commentary on the DVD to make me
realize that this is the true story of the movie and that might explain why “Man
of the West” originally panned at the box office. This is not a plotline that
would be appreciated or even recognized by the average western fan who is
probably almost as dense as I am.

Gary Cooper
is surprisingly good as Link Jones. He may appear a bit old and stiff, but as
the movie carries on he actually fit his role. He is never supposed to match
Billie Ellis, but he probably would in his youth and that is the point. She is
a flame of his youth and he is an old man remembering her. Elegant and
delicate.

I did not
recognize Lee J.Cobb at first. Man, they got him to look old! He usually played
some sort of a bastard, but here he is a particularly old and dirty one. That
was a man with some talent!

The
conclusion is that I liked the movie much better on after thought than while I
watched it. It is okay as a straight western, but exquisite as a dive into the subconscious.
Oh, and Julie London is quite a dish.

2 comments:

You've passed me by! And with this movie, which I have never seen, as well. Looking forward to getting back to some 1957 action. One version of hell must be stuck in an airport on a constantly more delayed flight ...

I hope you had a good vacation despite airport delays. There are few things worse than those, especially when you fly with children.Actually according to my edition of the book I am still in 57 so I'd say we are on par. Looking forward to reading some posts from you again.

Disclaimer on spoilers

If you have not seen these movies yet you may want to skip out on reading these commentaries. I am rarely holding back from revealing details from the movies that a proper review would hide under a spoiler tag. The reason is that these are not really reviews, but just my comments on the movies and some of the details which are most interesting to comment on are exactly the parts which will spoil the surprise if you have not seen it yet. So be warned.

About Me

In 2010 I started the project of gathering and seeing the 1001 movies listed in "1001 movies to see before you die". This is a blog to allow me to comment on them.
I am married with a son and geologist by training. Since 99 I have worked as a wind engineer at EMD (www.emd.dk) where I mostly work with wind studies and noise.